According to recent research, the average person makes 200 decisions every day that will influence his or her weight. And most of these decisions aren’t monumental choices, like “Should I become an elite marathon runner?” or “Should I move to Wisconsin and live entirely on bratwurst and cheese curds?” Most, in fact, are tiny little choices—habits, really—that over the long run, lead us down one of two paths: the road to ripped, or the freeway to flab.

And guess what? That’s great news! Because it means that you don’t have to run marathons—or even give up bratwurst—to start losing serious weight. You just need to break 7 very simple, common habits—tiny changes that have nothing to do with diet and exercise, but have everything to do with dropping pounds, looking great, and making a huge improvement in your health.

Fat Habit #1: Putting the Serving Dishes on the Table

Researchers at Cornell University found that when people served themselves from the kitchen counter or the stove, they ate up to 35 percent less food than they did when the grub was on the kitchen or dining room table. When there’s distance between us and our food, the scientists theorize, we think harder about whether we’re really hungry for more.

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Fat Habit #2: Getting Too Little (or Too Much) Sleep

A sleep schedule is vital to any weight-loss plan, say Wake Forest University researchers who tracked study participants for 5 years. In the under-40 age group, people who slept 5 hours or less each night gained nearly 2½ times as much abdominal fat as those who logged 6 to 7 hours; also, those who slept 8 hours or longer added nearly twice as much belly fat as the 6- to 7-hour group.

People with sleep deficits tend to eat more (and use less energy) because they’re tired, says study coauthor Kristen Hairston, M.D., while those who sleep longer than 8 hours a night tend to be less active.

Fat Habit #3: Not Multitasking While Watching TV

We don’t need to tell you that too much TV has been linked to weight gain. But here’s what you may not realize: You can have your TV and watch it, too. Just do something else at the same time. Washing dishes burns 70 calories every 30 minutes. So does ironing. Here’s another thing to keep in mind: Cutting TV time even a little helps you burn calories, say researchers at the University of Vermont. In their study, overweight participants who cut their viewing time in half (from an average of 5 hours to 2.5) burned an extra 119 calories a day. “Nearly anything you do—even reading—uses more energy than watching TV,” says study author Jennifer J. Otten, Ph.D.

Fat Habit #4: Drinking Soda

Researchers say you can measure a person’s risk of obesity by measuring his or her soda intake. Versus people who don’t drink sweetened sodas, here’s what your daily intake means:

½ can = 26 percent increased risk of being overweight or obese

½ to 1 can = 30.4 percent increased risk

1 to 2 cans = 32.8 percent increased risk

More than 2 cans = 47.2 percent increased risk

That’s a pretty remarkable set of stats. You don’t have to guzzle Double Gulps from 7-Eleven to put yourself at risk—you just need to indulge in one or two cans a day. Wow. And because high-fructose corn syrup is so cheap, food marketers keep making serving sizes bigger (even the “small” at most movie theaters is enough to drown a raccoon). That means we’re drinking more than ever and don’t even realize it: In the 1950s, the average person drank 11 gallons of soda a year. By the mid-2000s, we were drinking 46 gallons a year. A Center for Science in the Public Interest report contained this shocking sentence: “Carbonated soft drinks are the single biggest source of calories in the American diet.”

Fat Habit #5: Taking Big Bites

Dutch researchers recently found that big bites and fast chewing can lead to overeating. In the study, people who chewed large bites of food for 3 seconds consumed 52 percent more food before feeling full than those who chewed small bites for 9 seconds. The reason: Tasting food for a longer period of time (no matter how much of it you bite off) signals your brain to make you feel full sooner, say the scientists.

Fat Habit #6: Not Eating Enough Fat

You don’t have to go whole hog on a low-carb diet to see results. Simply swapping a few hundred calories of carbs for a little fat may help you lose weight and reduce your blood-insulin levels, according to researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. People in their study who consumed just 43 percent of their calories from carbohydrates felt fuller after 4 hours and maintained their blood-sugar levels longer than those who ate 55 percent carbs.

Carbs can cause blood-sugar levels to spike and then crash, leading to hunger and overeating, says study author Barbara Gower, Ph.D. Fat, on the other hand, keeps you satiated longer. Some easy swaps: butter instead of jam on toast; bacon instead of potatoes; low-fat milk instead of a sports drink.

Fat Habit #7: Not Getting the Best Guidance!

Signing up for e-mails (or tweets) that contain weight-loss advice can help you drop pounds, a new study reveals. When researchers from Canada sent diet and exercise advice to more than 1,000 working adults weekly, they discovered that the recipients boosted their physical activity and ate smarter. People who didn’t receive the reminders didn’t change. Lucky for you, we publish the best diet and fitness guidance every single day.

Take Control of Your Food

Cancer causers at your cookout? A hidden brain-damaging agent in your morning hash browns? Potentially fatal superbugs lurking in your supermarket meat? The research on our food system is enough to wipe out your appetite. Luckily, you can easily sidestep many food system threats as long as you avoid these 6 dangerous food mistakes…

Charring Your Meat

The Threat: Heterocyclic amines, or HCAs, are carcinogenic compounds created when meat is heated up. This barbecue bummer has been shown to increase the risk of breast, lung, stomach, pancreatic, and prostate cancers.

The Fix: Master the marinade. The American Institute for Cancer Research found that marinating meat can lower HCAs by as much as 99 percent. A Kansas State University study found that marinating steaks lowered HCAs by 87 percent. Rosemary marinades are particularly protective. Food Safety Consortium tests found gingerroot, rosemary, and tumeric—all high in antioxidants—curb HCAs in cooked meat, even when cooking is at high temps. (Rosemary is most protective.) Using avocado oil can help, too. The oil—rich in cholesterol-lowering monounsaturated fatty acids, has a high smoke point, reducing harmful oil oxidation.

Skipping the Soak

The Threat: A 2011 study in Environmental Health found more than 95 percent of preschool children ingested potentially damaging levels of acrylamide, a naturally occurring compound formed when starchy foods are cooked at 250° F or higher. Based on lab animal studies, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified acrylamide as a “probable human carcinogen.”

Other scientists found a link between chronic dietary exposure to acrylamide and damaged nerve cells in the brain, signaling acrylamide could promote neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer’s.

The Fix: You don’t have to write off mashed potatoes. Before cooking any spuds, first soak the raw, sliced potatoes in water for two hours to slash acrylamide by nearly 50 percent. Low on time? Even a 30-second rinse lowers acrylamide levels by more than 20 percent. Whatever you do, avoid storing potatoes in the refrigerator—that actually encourages them to produce more acrylamide during cooking.

Toasting Too Intensely

The Threat: Toasting your bread until it’s very dark also sends acrylamide levels soaring. In fact, many processed foods like crackers and cookies contain acrylamide because the food industry created the high-carb snacks at high temperatures.

The Fix: Choose a lighter toast. Better yet, try baking your own bread. A 2008 Danish study found that adding rosemary to the dough before making wheat buns lowered the buns’ acrylamide content by up to 60 percent. Even adding just a small amount of rosemary—1 percent of the dough—significantly lowered acrylamide levels.

Indulging in Arsenic

The Threat: Two recent reports from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Consumer Reports found worrisome levels of the carcinogen arsenic in rice and rice-based processed foods.

The Fix: Environmental Working Group, a consumer-advocacy group, suggests rinsing brown rice through before you cook it. A good rinse could lower arsenic levels by 30 to 40 percent. (This doesn’t work with white rice.) For babies, consider orange vegetables as a first food instead of rice-based cereal, suggests EWG.

Underestimating Unwanted Warm-Ups

The Threat: Picnics mean deviled eggs and macaroni and potato salad. But allowing these cookout staples to stay out too long could leave your guests with a nasty stomach bug.

“The two main problems of foodborne illness in the U.S.” says Williamson, “are not cooking food to a high-enough temperature, and leaving food out at an unsafe temperature.” Don’t leave any food items out for longer than two hours, she adds, and in very hot, 90-degree-plus temperatures, take it inside after an hour.

The Fix: Scrub fruits and veggies used in salads thoroughly before cutting. Keep deviled eggs and salads cold—packed in a cooler that’s filled 75 percent with food and 25 percent with ice or frozen drinks or cold packs, to allow cold air to circulate freely. Cold food should be kept at 40° F or below.

Getting Sloppy with Superbugs

The Threat: According to a recent analysis, 87 percent of supermarket meat contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hard-to-kill germs that in some cases could be fatal.

The Fix: Simple food-safety measures like storing meat on the lowest rack of your refrigerator (away from produce), using separate cutting boards for meat and fruits and veggies, and using a food thermometer can help combat infections. While all meat should be treated carefully to avoid foodborne disease, choose organic when you can. Other tests have shown organic meats harbor fewer antibiotic-resistant germs, likely because they aren’t from animals overfed antibiotics, the standard practice in industrial, nonorganic agriculture. ***

*** from rodale.com